In his hearing before the Gestapo during his imprisonment, defenseless and powerless as he then was only fortified by the word of God in his heart, he stood erect and unbroken before his tormentors. He refused to recant , and defied the Gestapo machine by openly admitting that, as a Christian, he was an implacable enemy of National Socialism and its totalitarian demands toward the citizendefied it, although he was continually threatened with torture and with the arrest of his parents, his sisters and his fiancee, who all had a helping hand in his activities.
In 1944, when friends made an attempt to liberate him and to take him to safety abroad, he decided to remain in prison in order not to endanger others.
The last service which Dietrich Bonhoeffer held on the day before his death
"moved all deeply, Catholics and Protestants alike, by his simple sincerity."
Bonhoeffer, who was never tried, went steadfastly on his last way to be hanged, and died with admirable calmness and dignity. God heard his prayer and granted him the "costly grace"that is, the privilege of taking the cross for others and of affirming his faith by martyrdom. 26
Bonhoeffer and his friends
proved by their resistance unto death that
there are loyalties which transcend those to state and nations.
It is a sin again Him
if it degenerates into national egotism and greed. 28
These men raised the claims of a higher loyalty than the national, and challenged politicians and churchmen alike. But they had not experienced the full weight of the tragic issue at stake. Only those who paid with their lives for the tragic conflict of loyalties can claim to be the martyrs of a new age. 29
When a man really gives up trying to make something out of himselfa saint, or a converted sinner,
a righteous or unrighteous man
when in the fullness of tasks, questions, success or ill-hap, experiences and perplexities, a man throws himself into the arms of God
then he wakes with Christ in Gethesemane. That is faith
. How can a man wax arrogant if in this life he shares the suffering of God? 24
Both modern liberal theology and secular totalitarianism hold pretty much in common that the message of the Bible has to be adapted more or less, to the requirements of a secular world. No wonder, therefore, that the process of debasing Christianity as by liberal theology led, in the long run, to a complete perversion and falsification of the essence of Christianity teaching by National Socialism. 30
A Christian must be prepared, if necessary, to offer his life for this. Thus all kinds of secular totalitarianism which force man to cast aside his religious and moral obligations to God and subordinate the laws of justice and morality to the State are incompatible with his conception of life. This explains why Bonhoeffer did not take the pacifist line
31
The life of the spirit is not that which shuns death and keeps clear of destruction: rather it endures death and in death it is sustained. It only achieves its truth in t he midst of utter destruction." 33
In a modern dictatorship, however, with its subterranean ubiquity and all-embracing instruments of oppression, a revolt means certain death to all who support it. .. The majority of the people in all nations alike does not consist of heroes. What Dietrich Bonhoeffer and others did cannot be expected from the many. The future in modern society depends much more on the quiet heroism of the very few who are inspired by God. These few will greatly enjoy the divine inspiration and will be prepared to stand for the dignity of man and true freedom and to keep the law of God, even if it means martyrdom or death.
because they "look not at the things which are seen, but at the things which are unseen; for the things which are seen /are temporal, but the things that are unseen are eternal." [2 Cor. 4:17-18, 33-34]
Jesus invites all those that labor and are heavy laden, and nothing could be so contrary to our best intentions, and so fatal to our proclamation , as to drive men away from him by forcing upon them man-made dogmas. If we did so, we should make the love of Jesus Christ a laughing-stock to Christians and pagans alike. 39
